Archive for June, 2007
Fancy making some money without even trying? Why not try selling yourself? No, I’m not talking about prostitution, I’m talking about that goldmine you’re sitting on - your own lovely body. Thanks to the handy cadaver calculator, I now know that my cold flesh is worth a reasonable $70 a kilo, or $4625 for the whole carcass. While being worth twice my weight in nickel is pretty exciting, I can’t help but feel bad that a long-haired albino dwarf is worth five times more than me.
* Disclaimer - I can’t really say how accurate this is, the price seems to go up for healthy bodies with rare conditions, so I’m guessing it’s an amalgamation of estimated research value and spare body part prices. I’m pretty sure trading in human body parts is illegal in Europe, so if you’re planning to get rich quick by dying, I’d suggest making sure you pass away in a country more open-minded to this kind of entrepreneurial activity. China, maybe?
June 27th, 2007
After a hard morning crunching code and digesting data, I’m pleased to announce that SciencePunk.com is now fully print-friendly. Well, more like reasonably print-friendly. I’ve stuck a small icon in the bottom right corner for ease of use and hopefully the print version of the page has all the bits you need and none of the bits you don’t.
So now you can read SciencePunk wherever you like, and then fold the old articles into cool origami animals! And remember kids, a tree is for life, not just for lousy email forwards, so please be conscientious when you hit that little button.
June 25th, 2007
If you weren’t already convinced from my previous post, here’s more irrefutable evidence that Jesus loves dinosaurs.
From the ever-subversive types over at b3ta.com.
June 25th, 2007
Please enjoy this classic article from the archives while I work on my job applications. If you’ve got a job for a smart young skeptic who loves science, be sure to get in touch.
The snapping shrimp (Alpheus heterochaelis) is so named for its habit of making an extremely loud snapping sound by the rapid closure of its snapper claw. For a long time it was thought that the sound was made by the two surfaces of the claw striking eachother, much in the same way as you clicking your fingers. However, research published in Science demonstrates that the loud pop is actually produced by the collapse of a cavitation bubble brought about by the extreme pressure created by the closing snapper.
However, that is not where the story ends. The pressures created by the snapping shrimp are so high that the collapsing bubble heats up to 5,000 K (!!!), emitting a short spark of light. This is the first known example of “shrimpoluminescence” and the only known species that can shoot fireballs out of its limbs. Whether the shrimp could also be heard shouting “hadouken!” at the moment of snapping remains in debate.
Video not displayed? Go here for more videos!
June 21st, 2007
Over at Science and Progress, the very clever Coracle casts a critical eye over some of Ann Walker’s claims. After analysing the evidence for the use of chondroitin to combat pain from osteoathritis, and finding nothing, we’re shown that Echinacea is not only useless at combatting common colds and upper respiratory tract infections, but it may actually be harmful in some situations. Eat that, herbalists!
June 20th, 2007
Athiest humour from the delightful Dresden Codak.
June 20th, 2007
Seeing as you all enjoyed the Wooden Calculator and even moreso the Wooden Pocket Watch, I thought I’d lay down some more carpentry chronometry on you. First of all, let us note that wooden clocks aren’t as rare as you might believe. Wood has often sufficed in clockmaking when brass was scarce, either due to a shortage of the metal itself (e.g. in the newly-independent United States of America) or simply because wood was more affordable. The high friction of wooden gears is the main drawback, a problem master clockmaker and lone genius John Harrison (who went on to solve the Longitude Problem) solved by using lignum vitae, a tropical hardwood that exudes an oil and thus is self-lubricating. As a joiner by trade, Harrison used wooden parts wherever he could, although he turned to metal parts in later clocks. If you are in any doubt of Harrison’s skillz, know this: his Late Regulator clock is still running, 230 years on, and it still doesn’t need any oil.
Now, perhaps you fancy your very own wooden clock? One of Harrison’s pieces will set you back, ooh, say, several hundred million at a guess, so perhaps we should look for something more contemporary. Kuyt Richards are a company who employ artists to make clocks out of wood, and very beautiful they are too. Don’t believe me? Take a look at these:
Somehow I doubt my dole money is going to cover the price of one of these, so am I to be forever without a wooden clock in my life? Not at all, because the lovely people at Houtman Designs have a mail-order clock plan so you can build your own wooden clock. Designs come in both “beginner” and “intermediate” and can be made from your choice of wood, which, if you’re like me, will be wood stolen from building sites. Awesome!
June 19th, 2007
Our Festival of Ann Walker season continues with an eloquent call to arms from Stephen Novella MD, the man behind NeuroLogica. He says:
This is a chronic threat faced by the skeptical movement. Uri Geller at one time sued CSICOP and James Randi, for example, and although he lost the case it had a chilling effect on the skeptical movement for years. The people that we criticize, whose false or unscientific claims we expose, are often con-artists and charlatans and they do not play fair, or even nice.
You can read the rest of his entry on the Ann Walker episode here.
June 18th, 2007
New Scientist reported briefly this week on renewed interest in space exploration, and some of the problems that entailed. They aired the idea of space guns: gigantic canons that can shoot a projectile into space. What they didn’t mention is that this idea was explored thoroughly over the last four decades, in a torrid affair that blended genius, passion, politics, the Cold War, illegal arms deals, imprisonment, Middle Eastern dictators, spies, and ultimately, the assassination of Gerald Bull.
Gerald Bull was a gifted artillery engineer whose life was centred around a single goal: creating a gun large enough to launch a payload into space. Bull earned his PhD at the University in Toronto in 1951, becoming the youngest ever graduate in the process. But his engineering genius was tempered by a lack of social skills that plagued his entire life, as Bull constantly came into conflict with his peers, superiors, and sometimes even entire governments.
In 1960, with funding from both Canada and the US, Bull began the High Altitude Research Project. He worked on this project for seven years, eventually building guns large enough to launch a projectile 60 miles high, into sub-orbital space. Canada pulled out of the HARP project in 1967 in protest at the Vietnam War; Gerald Bull took his supergun and formed a private company, the Space Research Corporation. The CIA helped to land his first major contract, supplying South Africa with 30,000 artillery shells, barrels and other equipment. His work enabled South Africa to win against Angola, but when President Carter took office in 1976, the winds shifted and Bull found himself arrested by the UN for illegal arms dealing. Serving 6 months in a US prison, Bull once again entered business with South Africa upon his release. He helped design one of the most advanced pieces of artillery in the world, the G5 Howitzer, which could fire shells over 30 miles. But once again, Bull was charged with arms dealing and fined $55,000 dollars.
Bull moved to Brussels and started to sell artillery to China and Iraq throughout the 1980s. It was at this time he convinced Saddam Hussein that Iraq needed to join the space race - and he knew just the method. Work began on “Baby Babylon” in the 80s. With a caliber of around 30 cm, and a barrel length of approximately 100m, Baby Babylon would have a range of 400 miles. But as the name suggested, this was just the a prototype for another supergun, Big Babylon. A five hundred foot long gun dug into a hillside, with a three foot wide barrel, Big Babylon would be able to fire a 2 ton projectile into orbit.
Big Babylon was never completed. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and Bull found himself in the middle of a very precarious political position. Despite his insistence that Big Babylon was not a threat to any nation, he had been helping Iraq develop its Scud missiles for several years in return for funding for his supergun project, a fact that bought him few friends. In March 1990, Gerald Bull was approached on his doorstep and shot five times in the head. His assassins are unknown, but the prime suspects are Israeli Mossad agents. However, Bull’s obstinate manner meant that he was never short of enemies, and it may even have been the case that Hussein suspected him of being a spy. The Babylon projects were dismantled and shipped out of Iraq following the war.
Interest in superguns evaporated after Bull’s death, and it looks likely his dream will never be achieved. At the very least, the physics of an undirected projectile mean that it will inevitably fall back to Earth. However, China still has active supergun research projects, recently completing construction of a 21m long gun. Whether these will ever fire satellites instead of shells remains to be seen.
June 18th, 2007
Our Festival of Ann Walker season continues: now the astrophysicists are giving space to discuss the gravity of the situation. Cosmic!
June 17th, 2007
Far sooner than I thought possible, and in a huge part down to the excitement surrounding the wooden pocket watch I recently wrote about (thanks, Reddit!), SciencePunk.com is proud to announce it has passed the one million hit mark. Wow!
Incredibly, we saw half of those million hits come in over the last three weeks alone, which leaves me wondering what I have to pull out of the bag to keep this growth up. Well, coming up over the next week or two I’ll be putting up a lot of really neat stuff, so be sure to check back often or add an RSS feed.
In the meantime, for your pleasure, here are the all-time top-five SciencePunk articles (so far)
1) 1900s Wooden Pocket Watch
2) 1830s Wooden Calculator
3) E211, DNA, and science by press release
4) Eight-legged Freaks
5) Red Clover comments leave a bitter aftertaste
And five you might have missed:
1) Nathan Efron whores himself for Bausch & Lomb
2) Strange Pricing from Tesco
3) China puts pigeons on remote control
4) Albert Abrams, the original electro-quack
5) Schrödinger will kill you…
Enjoy, and keep coming back!
June 17th, 2007
Our Festival of Ann Walker season continues with a thorough analysis of Ann Walker’s claims about ginko biloba by the excellent people over at HolfordWatch. I might be giving away too much if I tell you the title is “There is no convincing evidence that Ginkgo biloba is efficacious for dementia and cognitive impairment“. Just another example of how trying to silence your critics never works on the internet, and only attracts more attention to your dubious claims.
June 16th, 2007
The BBC is reporting the discovery of a three-headed frog by children at a nursery in Weston-super-Mare. Apparently resident BBC wildlife expert Mike Dilger thinks it could be an early warning of environmental problems. He also says that frogs are “primitive” and so “the occasional extra toe is not that unusual”, and I’m struggling to follow the logic of that. I’m calling hoax on the whole thing as a) the specimen conveniently escaped before it could be examined by anyone of authority, and b) the image looks to me like two males grasping a female - common behaviour during mating in frogs.
June 16th, 2007
Our Festival of Ann Walker season continues with a link to the Bad Science blog, a heavily fortified compound from which king science punk Ben Goldacre rallied support for Prof David Culquhoun’s cause. It was Ben that brought this story to a huge audience through his column in the Guardian, resulting in scientists and concerned citizens the world over writing to the the UCL Provost and calling for the defence of academic discussion. See what he has to say about the story here.
June 15th, 2007
Last week, Professor David Colquhoun’s excellent Improbable Science blog was taken off the UCL servers following a complaint from Alan Lakin, acting on behalf of his wife Ann Walker. Ann Walker sells herbal remedies from her website, New Vitality. Amongst other things, she claims that Red Clover is able to “cleanse” blood, a statement Colquhoun branded “gobbledegook”.
This didn’t go down well with Walker, and she unleashed a multi-pronged attack on Colquhoun and his website, accusing him of “incorrect, misleading and defamatory” comments, copyright infringement, breach of data protection guidelines, misuse of IT resources, office space and secretarial facilities. The copyright claim was due to Colquhoun reproducing the image of red clover from the New Vitality site. I’ve done the same thing, and I’m claiming Fair Use on it.
Subsequently, the Improbable Science page was moved off the UCL servers whilst the university scrambled to check the veracity of Lakin’s claims. This unleashed a second storm as acadmics the world over criticised the university for appearing to cave in to a disgruntled herb seller. As most saw it, the university had a duty to stand by academic freedom of discussion, not distance itself from Colquhoun.
Happily, after a meeting with lawyers, and a few small concessions by Colquhoun, the Improbable Science page is set to move back to UCL servers.
The lessons here are manifold - for academic writers, universities and alternative therapists. For the writers, we have to be sure that a robust criticism of pseudoscientific gobbledegook doesn’t overspill into libel, which can be surprisingly easy (as I found out). For universities, a greater attention to academic freedom and what is published on their servers is a high priority.
For alternative therapists, the lesson is clear. If you don’t like when someone points out that you’re selling magic beans, don’t debate their science. In fact, don’t even write to them directly - complain to their employers about a myriad of arbitrary matters in the hope nobody will notice that you haven’t refuted their claims of magic bean-selling. Hope that the cost of hiring a very expensive lawyer will be too much and the site will simply be closed down. But above all, don’t mention the magic beans.
It didn’t work for Ann Walker, but that doesn’t mean that it never does. Gillian McKeith attacked a satirical song about her using the same methods. Science won this time, but not everyone has an employer with deep pockets. Ironically for Ann Walker, an attempt to silence criticism of her herbal remedies has now made the comments better known than Professor Colquhoun ever could have achieved by himself.
As a result of this increased interest, there is likely to be a surge of sciencepunkery in dealing with Walker’s claims. In fact, it’s already begun.
June 13th, 2007
Previous Posts
